Monday, May 21, 2012

Book Club Report: What We Thought of Precious Bane

Overall, this book was a big hit at book club! Four and five stars all around! We for sure decided it's a classic that needs more love, so please, go out, find it and read it!

My review can be found here, but quickly, this book is about a small English town int he 1800s, more specifically about a particular family in the town. There's a brother and a sister in this family and the brother has some greed issues, and the sister has some physical beauty issues. This is the story of how they both deal with those issues and how the ending is a bit different for each of them.
Here are a few general book club thoughts:

We all wondered why this book is not more well known? Especially given the fact that it's really quite good! Is it because it's about poor farmers and not rich gentry? If so.... that is just... dumb.

We loved the contrast between the negative and positive reactions of each of the characters and their situations.

Some of us learned a new saying (or two) about the hare-lip affliction.... "a hare has crossed my path" or "hare shotten." We realized this term "hare lip" is not even really used anymore at all and is now referred to as cleft lip or palate.

Everyone agreed, this book is symbolism at it's best. It's there and you actually "get" it.

What is the "precious bane?" We decided his greed and her lip.

We were fascinated with the "sin eating" which is an event that begins this story. They believed that when a person dies, another person needs to take on the dead person's sins by eating bread over the casket. We'd never heard of this tradition before.

We all agreed that the dialect and language of the book took awhile to get into but once we did, it was fun and interesting. The book is written by how the people talk and you may even have to read parts out loud to actually get it.

4 comments:

I'm still trying to finish it. I'm getting into it a bit more, but still haven't got passed the "boring" stuff yet that most people mentioned. I'm giving it to page 120 since most everyone said it took the first 100 pages to get into it. I hope I can and end up like it. Otherwise, I may not belong in the book club anymore, lol.

Wow, what a ride. When an invisible barrier suddenly descends on this small town, how will the people handle things? Let's just say... not very well! Would it be giving away too much if I say... pretty much EVERYONE dies! And all written in...